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The University of California San Francisco Medical Center has started using an automated hospital pharmacy, which uses robotic technology to prepare and track medications.

Not a single error has occurred in the 350,000 doses of medication prepared during the system’s recent phase in, according to UCSF Medical Center.

Once computers at the new pharmacy electronically receive medication orders from UCSF physicians and pharmacists, the robotics pick, package, and dispense individual doses of pills. Machines assemble doses onto a thin plastic ring that contains all the medications for a patient for a 12-hour period, which is bar-coded. This fall, nurses at UCSF Medical Center will begin to use barcode readers to scan the medication at patients’ bedsides, verifying it is the correct dosage for the patient.

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